The girl had stopped on the knoll above the camp; and she stood there for a moment looking all about, thinking Darrin might be somewhere near. Then she marked the careful order of the spot, and saw that all the camp gear was stowed away; and abruptly she guessed what had happened. She ran then down the knoll, and so came almost at once upon the note he had left for her.
She read this through, frowning and puzzling a little over the intricacies of his handwriting; and she did not know whether to be unhappy over his going or happy that he had remembered to leave this word for her. She did not press the scribbled note against her bosom, but she did read it through a second time, and then refold it carefully, and then take it out and read it yet again. In the end it was still in her hand when she turned reluctantly back up the hill. She put it in the top drawer of her bureau in her room.
She told John and Evered at suppertime that Darrin was gone. Evered seemed like a man relieved of a burden, till she added, “He’s coming back again, though.”
John asked, “How do you know?”
“He left a note for me,” she said.
John bent over his plate, hiding the hurt in his eyes. The girl told him of the camera set in the swamp, and John promised to go and fetch it, and to bring Darrin’s other belongings under shelter in the woodshed or the barn.
He managed this the next day; and Ruth made occasion to go to the barn more than once for the sheer happiness of looking upon them. John caught her at it once; but he did not let her know that he had seen. The young man was in these days woefully unhappy.
It is fair to say that he had reason to be. Ruth was kind to him, never spoke harshly or in an unfriendly fashion; in fact, she was almost too friendly. There was a finality about her friendliness which baffled him and erected a barrier between him and her. The man tried awkwardly to bring matters back to the old sweet footing between them; but the girl was of nimbler wit than he. She put him off without seeming to do so; she erected an impassable defense about herself.
On the surface they were as they had always been. Evered could see no difference in their bearing. Neighbors who occasionally stopped at the house decided that John and Ruth were going to be married when the time should come; and they told each other they had always said so. Before others the relations between the two were pleasantly friendly; but there were no longer the sweet stolen moments when their arms entwined and their lips met. When they were alone together Ruth treated John as though others were about; and John knew no way to break through her barriers.
About the fifth day after Darrin’s going Ruth began to expect his return. He did not come on that day, nor on the next, nor on the next thereafter. She became a little wistful, a little lonely. Toward the middle of the second week she found herself clinging with a desperate earnestness to a despairing hope. He had promised to come back; she thought he would come back. There had never been any word of more than friendliness between them; yet the girl felt that such a word must come, and that he would return to speak it.